


DATA LINE 2043

by oppressa



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, And all the rest - Freeform, Barely an introduction, Console Cowboy Jack, F/M, Foreplay, Mention of electrocution kink/watersports, Pegging, Sex Toys, Street Samurai Anne, Stronger Female Weaker Male, The Sprawl, Tropes, Vibrators
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-10-22 07:48:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10692768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oppressa/pseuds/oppressa
Summary: Corsair, his handle was, in the Matrix. She had no idea what his real name might be.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hurhurhur yes in my mind they're a real cyberpunk couple.
> 
> Very very influenced by listening to a load of retrowave on Youtube and of course the motherfucking Sprawl Trilogy (I own nothing and no one from it I respect the hell out of you Gibson really)

 

They were hired on the same run, him near the beginning, her at the end. Anne received mop up instructions, directions to a hotel room in order to extract the jockey, who was lying on the floor next to the deck in his own vomit. All she knew was that he'd succeeded, but the data bank he cracked was huge, and you'd have had to go in deep to attempt transferring anything from it. A more sophisticated system had detected his, defence programs had been unleashed, too late to protect their code but blocking all the shining paths he'd made under layers of corporate grade ice before he could back off. Corsair, his handle was, in the Matrix. She had no idea what his real name might be.

She turned him over with the tip of her boot and crouched down. His eyes were rolled almost totally back into his head so only the thinnest sliver of brown could be seen, but he was breathing. Still in there. Jesus. She wondered if his mind was gone, if it might be easier just to gun him down and explain it away, but instead she unplugged him, detached the 'trodes from sweaty temples under dark hair. Took him home because there was nowhere else to go, opened the high collar on the expensive ruffled button up and let him sleep in her own bed. He didn't wake until the next day, the after effects of a protracted stay in cyberspace still clinging to his brain, and he was scared of her at first, like everyone is. His knuckles clutched white around the covers as she stood to greet him, his jaw pulled tight.

“I ain't gonna hurt you, cowboy. Name's Bonny. Anne Bonny.” She flicked her biz card at him. “We're on the same team.” _You can trust me_ , she doesn't say. She doesn't expect that much.

He picked it up, studied it, looked her up and down. “You do hurt people though, correct? Kill people, I expect, when it's called for.”

Wow, he was fucking mannered as shit. She didn't like his insinuation she was fists for hire when she was more than that, she had other skills. She gave him a thin smile.

“Count your blessings. Our employers wanted to get you out. You're obviously worth more alive.”

He frowned, then raised beseeching eyebrows. “I need to contact them. I assume you've got gear here?”

“You ain't going back in right now.”

“Hmm.” He nodded, not in agreement, as though taking her argument into account. “I beg your pardon, but that's not up to you.”

She decided to be blunt, even if it meant utilising his fear. “Well, I can stop you doing it, so yeah, it is. Fee's in your account, I'm told, if that's what you're worried about.”

Then he glared at her. She sensed the mind behind the dark eyes, as strong as her own. For a moment, it was like she understood the fascination with cowboys, if they all looked like that, very slender, with tanned shoulders, and a bunch of thin chains slung around a graceful neck, but strangely old-fashioned looking, no cybernetics that she could see. Then she blinked and knew he was getting towards the end of his game. Probably looking to go out on a high and didn't care if it killed him. That's what they all want. Not just fame in their day, but lasting notoriety. To be immortalised like Bobby Quine, McCoy Pauley, Henry Dorsett Case. But something stops her thinking he is just one in a thousand others punching deck for a living. There is talent, drive that burned through into a mainframe supposed to be impenetrable. 

The tension only broke when he lowered his head, sniffed his chest. “Why do I smell like vomit?”

“Take a wild guess.” She said, and turned on her heel, wanting out of the room.

 

Hours later, she sat by her blank teleset – she never traded in for simstim – with a bottle of Tsingtao. Staring in there, she can see her own memories, the violence playing out, the surgeries she'd had to make herself stronger. The hands she'd had to have replaced. The Bionic eye. Then something moved across in the background. She didn't look up as he lowered himself into the opposite chair, watching him lean forward in the screen.

“Anne, is it?”

She nodded.

“I guess it would be apt to thank you for what you had to do for me.”

Oh. She tightened the motors in her fist around the neck of the bottle, her insides squirming slightly. “Doesn't matter. Weren't no sweat. They could have sent someone else.”

He shrugged. “You came.”

She turned her gaze on him, softer than before. “Where were you, in there?”

He shuddered. “Somewhere deep inside the Guthrie cores. I couldn't tell what was forward or back, up or down anymore. There were just voices, AIs I'd imagine, talking to each other, pretending they weren't aware of me, but they knew I was there. I thought I'd flatlined, outside, that they could stretch my death out indefinitely, as long as they wanted, even if it only took a second...”

She nodded again, to show she understood the concept, suddenly glad she'd saved him, severed the connection.

“You ever jacked, Anne?”

“Once, twice. Got no gift for it.”

“You're good at what you do though, I know.”

“That's right.” No doubt about it.

“Well, I'm grateful, if you'll take that.”

She could, just about, handle his gratitude. “We should probably wash your clothes.” She said, getting up.

 

She gave him some of Vane's that were hanging around the place. He was tall enough for them, but he still looked really odd in an Electronic Forces t-shirt and baggy camohose.

“Whose are these?”

“Guy I used to know. Name of Vane. We were in the same line of work.” Well, perhaps not quite. People would apply the term _mercenary_ to Vane, pissed off with the EF after everything he gave them, gone rogue with his knowledge of tactical assaults.

“I've heard of _Vane_. Christ, he was the best, right? They had to take his plane down with an EMP missile fired out of a Panzer cannon. There was nothing left to rebuild.”

She was silent, hoping he caught her drift.

He muttered, “Some people you moved with.”

“Yeah.” But they're all dead now.

 

After that, Jack moved more casually about the place than he'd acted at first. She thinks that's his real voice, though – not a chip implanted in the throat he could switch to, to make himself stand out.

“Why ain't you enhanced?” She asked, when she felt more comfortable with him too, comfortable enough for personal questions, even though it's one he won't answer, sitting on the floor, naked but for underwear and her old headset, moving in the Matrix, cutting lines around the ice. Scouting something out. His eyes glazed. There'll be no reply. Still, it'd kill her to admit she's curious about that sort of thing.

Anyway, she didn't end up throwing him out. Stopped calling him cowboy at some point and uses his apparently real name. Eight months later he still resides with her. He more than earns his keep, went back to being a low rent tech hustler with sidelines in cybercrime. Only she's onto what he really wants, what he's searching for, all these hours dry running any new virus program he can get his hands on in the trade. He doesn't let anybody get the best of him, megacorp or not. He wants to find a way to burn the Guthrie cores down. Hasn't asked for her help yet, but he knows she's on side. It's only a matter of time.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've got more of this (sex time, sex toys, systems crash bad ending) but I'm not sure if it will continue as a) it's probably not what people want to read and b) it took me so long for just the set up. But maybe. I could at least think of a better title. I just figured I might as well post as I still love them and I don't mind this as a weird exploration thing.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Megadrive - [Dataline](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fI8AIuOFzZk/)
> 
> Power Glove - [ Streets of 2043](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEHZB7bySjI)

 

He comes out at 2:37 AM, lattices of light still pulsing in front of his eyes. He's an experienced jockey, and it's not like he loses track of time – well, perhaps he lets it slip a bit, but sometimes it's easier to be killing it in the Matrix than it is to sleep. Still, his brain patterns have effectively settled down since Anne found him, dying megabyte by megabyte on the floor of the hired suite. She pulled him out of that unreal dungeon, even if he thought he'd woken up to a work-over, assumed she was some kind of heat, or worse, a Guthrie family retainer traced his rig. She was the first real thing he saw, after he felt he'd never see anything real again, and that's lent a value to it he'd lost sight of in his years as a jockey, the material world and its physical implants never quite matching the shine and rush of cyberspace. He knew she was paid by the same rival corporation that had bought him into the run on the Guthries, and the holopic on her card made her look nasty. But he'd spent an age turning it over in his fingers, gathering the strength to get up while wondering what his line should be with her. In the end whatever he chose went out the window when they spoke; he has a feeling she'd have seen through anything.  
   
He takes off the headset with the inbuilt lenses, custom made, full immersion courtesy of the proceeds from the Guthrie run, and shuffles across the living area, to see if she's here, or out on the streets. The door to her room is open, and she's laying on the high slab of temperfoam, perhaps not knowing how invitingly. Naked, legs over the edge, resting flesh-painted mech hands on her stomach. Whoever it was did such a good job you couldn't tell unless you knew they'd been lacerated in a death match with a Yakuza, by the glass shards she'd used to finish him off, although not before her left eye had been damaged beyond all repair. The laser optics set behind her replaced retina shine. He doesn't think she's been staying up for him to finish, there are probably myriad other reasons why she can't sleep, same as him. He smooths his hair, rumpled from wearing the set, stands in the doorway, awkwardly, though the transition back to the body doesn't much affect him anymore.

“About to give up waitin'.” She says huskily.

“I thought you'd still be out.” She's gone all night, sometimes, and he has to entertain himself. Which is fine; she's with him often enough. Nights in the bars, mornings in the water gardens, afternoons in the arcade. It sounds possessive, but then she's his.

“I came back, Jack. Not that you noticed. There's a security issue, there.”

“I upped your goddamn security within 24 hours of being here.” He snaps, as he starts to undress. She wishes he'd protect himself better. But he knows how to fire a gun. The one he owns is too stylised for Anne's liking, but functional. He's got no qualms about putting an azide round in someone's face, in the highly unlikely event they should compromise _his_ security system.

“Good thing, considering I'm harbouring your arse from people with ICE that almost fried your brain in your skull.”

He winces, doesn't know why she has to be so graphic. He'd heard that brain death was meant to be quite the transcendental way to go. The stuff of cowboy legend. But all in all it was cold, and quiet, and absolutely terrifying. He vomited unconsciously, couldn't even feel the burn in his throat. And she was introduced to him like that, to the bent shell of his taller-than-average body, no sign of the battle inside. He can be sure that no thoughts of _Hey, cowboy_ flashed through her mind. Not then.

“I could've gone out like the greatest jockey that ever lived-” An exaggeration, but he needs to retain _some_ pride in his work.

She rolls her eyes, spreads her legs further apart, tilts her hips up a little. “Come here, you smartarse fuck.”

Well, all right. He smiles. He likes when they're in agreement, above everything, all the petty squabbles.

Turns out he's not fully attuned to what she has in mind. One second they are entwined, his hand flat against her genitals, organic, warm and wet. The next Anne's sitting on him, a death grip on his wrists, looking at him like she's just run him down, like she's gonna whip out the shock stave and let him have it. Then maybe press it against his flushed neck, deactivated, and grin to find he's pissed himself, rivulets of hot urine snaking down his trembling thighs.

He whispers, all raw-throated, “Thought you weren't gonna hurt me.”

She chuckles. “Did I say?”

He leans further up to speak in her ear, panting, teeth catching on her earrings. “But I might like it if you did.”

She pushes him down with far superior strength, augmented though it is, a hand on his chest, the other fisted in his hair. “Yeah, I know your fucking type, Rackham.”

When she gets up off him to go and rummage in one of the drawers, he knows he's the one getting fucked tonight. It's not always especially easy to watch her lubricate the strap on, although he wants it, hauling himself up on his hands, but not away.

But the first thing she does is rub her cock against his, until it's hard as the artificial silicon, only his doesn't _vibrate_ like that, send her into a fucking delirium even before it's inside her. His nails make indentations in the foam as it buzzes up and down, from base to tip. _Ah, shit._ He's leaking from there, shuddering, with his eyes closed, biting his lip. Anne withdraws it before he spurts, though, recognising the signs.

“You want some more of that?”

No, he doesn't want to be teased, if that's what it is.

“Or you ready now?”

He nods. She lets him lie for a while, palming/playing with his erection, and then she says, “Okay.”

He takes a deep breath when she parts his thighs, feeling knees resting in between his, gentle pressure at his entrance. True to her word back at their very first conversation, it doesn't hurt. It's bearable, being stretched around it, as it inches in.

“That's good.” She murmurs. “Doing good.”

The shaft starts to revolve again, the speed controlled by Anne's finger on the switch, opening him even further.

“Fucking _hell_.” He gasps. She's kissing him, telling him it's okay to make noise, she wants to know how it makes him feel. But he knows those damnable little motors stimulate her clit, too.

“Give me just one _second_ –” And then it shuts off.

“Move.”

He doesn't even think to object, tightens his muscles and works himself on the thing slid inside him, reaches up to hold onto her arms. Anne lets him clench as hard as he likes, he can hear her little sounds she makes when she gets off, almost mewling, as he drives down hard, just stubborn enough not to come at this.

She growls gutturally in his face, shakes him off and takes over, angling it even deeper into him, the thrusts getting rougher, his sense of penetration increasing ahundredfold, though he thought it was all the way in. He couldn't silence himself now if he tried. Anne holds him against his stomach while she fucks him, steering him this way and that, traces of cold, cold lube on her hands transferring onto his overheated skin. In the final moments, his mind slips away, to the Guthrie's blazing white tower in cyberspace. Fuck, they got it coming. He imagines their entire empire exploding into a million glittering pieces, like the ones that cut Anne's hands. He will burn his name across their nexus so they'll know the architect of their destruction. And as for the AIs that had him trapped, that'll strike them off the registry and he can watch them run through the dark pathways of the greater Matrix, stripped of their powers of manifesting outside – oh but Jesus, he's gone, losing that thread of his revenge to the crashing wave of orgasm. His concentration breaks. Maybe they even beat him again, as he struggles to care. It is, at this stage, only a fantasy. Then the black arrives, the jack-out, the end of line.

The next thing he's really fully aware of is Anne coming out of the bathroom, throwing a towel at him. He doesn't bother to try and catch it. She sighs and sits beside him, staring into the dark, the faint rim of pale blue light outlining one of her irises, slightly raised traces of extensive microcircuit surgery laid under the skin of her cheek.

She shifts away when he tries to touch her.

“I just showered, Jack.”

He makes a scoffing noise, content to lie here in his own sweat, for the moment. Soon enough, she relents, lifting his head to rest on her washed-and-powdered crossed legs.

“Do you remember the first time you saw it?” She asks, without saying specifically what she means. _Cyberspace_. Yeah. He remembers, through the haze of so many jacks. He was thirteen or fourteen. Simstim was quite the new thing, eclipsing any still fundamentally unconvincing VR gone before. And he needed it, in the place of any other form of escape. His father drank and knocked him about, his mother said nothing about the equipment slowly building up, units stacked on top of each other, in his room. One day he traded it all in for a Ono-Sendai 5 deck, not such hot property back then. He cruised past vast quantities of data in the Matrix, populated by the blocks of the big corporations as it was, without the shifting cosmic nature it has today. And occasionally he would stop and try to change something, fucking up and getting better, all without their knowledge. He never felt it necessary to tell anyone any of this, something so utterly conventional, rather the desire to leave it all behind, but Anne...Anne is somehow different, understanding of the things he keeps from other people. His attempts at obfuscation are met with a growl of _don't fuck around with me, Jack_. There is the sex, but she's also a friend, someone true in a sea of enemies and acquaintances, connections and rivals – those to be halfway civil to and those not to piss on if they were on fire.

Meanwhile Anne was associates with Vane, a guy who always made Jack afraid while he was alive. And intrigued, he still intrigues him, though Jack has worn his clothes. Now whenever he's reminded of the fact he was here at one point, he feels a sharp spike of jealousy, for a dead man. He wonders, not for the first time, what the nature of their relationship was – Anne has never said they screwed, but she shuts down when he tries to get anything pertaining to him out of her. She doesn't want him too much involved in her work, for his own safety, and he can respect that, he's no tough guy. But he is admittedly inquisitive, and it's maddening, not having his curiosity satisfied.

“Talk.” Anne says, very near his mouth, bent down so her nose brushes his, a thumb under his jaw. Fingers that could crush his face cupping it instead. This is not the way he expected she'd interrogate him, nor the things he thought she'd be interested in, back when. “Ain't like you not to.”

Fine, fine. The first time he saw the doorway of the Matrix opening to him, the moment of complete teenage confidence that he just _got it_ , the contrast of its bright and dark geometry unfolding in front of him, showing him what he was meant for. He props himself up on his elbows and with difficulty, swallows his own questions for another day.

 


End file.
